An indicator of how confident investors are in the U.S. economy.
Barron's takes the average YTM (yield-to-maturity) of Barron's Best Grade bond list, and divides it by the average YTM of the Intermediate Grade bond list. Barron's publishes the index weekly, which basically serves to calculate investor appetite for additional investment risk.
Related or Semi-related Video
Finance: What is Investment Grade?2 Views
Finance allah shmoop what is investment grade Whoa whoa Really
steve Not not investment grade No Oh alright much better
This is investment grade Aren't enough of that Think about
the quality of investment in a bond as relating tow
How slippery the slope is on which investors are driving
their investment returns when you get way Steep like here
in the rocky mountains Well that's the land of c
and d rated bonds And you make a lot of
vertical progress As long as things don't go Ah arai
like vertical progress Like you get very high interest rates
for taking a lot of risk that these bonds go
bankrupt They're not investment grade so yeah And things go
awry Well you look like that guy All right So
here's the map for grades of bonds brought to you
courtesy of the kindly loving people at moody's and s
and p rating services And you can see the block
investment grade there from the three triple d minus there
on up Well all of these are investment grade Meaning
that at least historically the odds of any of these
bonds going bad I e they stopped paying interest payments
And investors don't collect well The odds of them failing
are very low The whole notion of being investment grade
means that the odds of getting your investment in the
bond back plus all the interest payments are really high
Their grade is for investors And with that certainty comes
thie quote penalty unquote of lower interest rates or investment
returns Because presumably in buying investment grade paper investors have
taken last risk so they get less reward right Yeah
and you know for those who eat risk for breakfast
you know the sky's the limit and not always in 00:01:56.657 --> [endTime] a good way No
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